UPFRONT | Columnist BUSINESS TALK School’s out O The chiropractic college to career transition BY DR. ANTHONY J. LOMBARDI, DC ANTHONY LOMBARDI, DC, is a private consultant to athletes in the NFL, CFL and NHL, and founder of the Hamilton Back Clinic, a multidisciplinary clinic. He teaches his fundamental EXSTORE Assessment System and practice building workshops to various health professionals. For more information, visit www.exstore.ca. 14 Chiropractic and Naturopathic Doctor March/April 2021 www.Cndoctor.ca Photo credit: © BalanceFormCreative / Adobe Stock ne would think that any mean-ingful piece of literature writ-ten on chiropractic business development and entrepre-neurship would be written by a chiropractor. However, in 2019, a 200-page dissertation titled “A narrative inquiry into the college-to-career transition of chi-ropractors who built financially viable pri-vate practices,” was presented to the Faculty of the California School of Professional Psychology Alliant International University in Fresno. This was in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Psychology written by James A. Sampair, M.S., M.A. The (now) Dr. James Sampair was an avid reader of my column in Canadian Chiropractor magazine and referenced three of my articles throughout his dissertation. In his abstract, Dr. Sampair makes several arguments he defends throughout the 200 pages. He says that chiropractic graduates had been trained and prepared extensively to be clinicians before they were licensed, but most private practice owners needed to learn how to be entrepreneurs if they were to be financially self-sustaining. He amassed qualitative work which created a narrative inquiry method to investigate the experiences of 10 chiropractors who had built financially vi-able private practices during their college-to-career transition. He asked them to simply: “…share your experience of devel-oping a financially viable private practice after chiropractic college.” The DCs who participated had been licensed be-tween four and 14 years, initially being licensed between the years of 2004 and 2014. Four themes emerged: integrity, perseverance, making a difference, and partnerships. The research question was: “What was the experience of chiropractors as they developed a financially viable private practice after graduation from chiropractic college at the beginning of the 21st century?” Dr. Sampair evaluated the literature (which included Cana-dian Chiropractor ) and he found that in spite of the longstand-ing entrepreneurial tradition within the chiropractic profession, and despite the courses, preceptorships, and resources availa-ble to students and alumni, chiropractic practitioners rated their preparation to be entrepreneurs poorly. After graduation, Dr. Sampair revealed that new gradu-ates were largely left to manage their college-to-career transition in isolation. In short, there is a distinct difference between change and transition. Transition was found to be a “psychological re-orientation and self-definition” one has to process. Transition from school to career meant that graduates had to let go of the past. This was best delineated by many of the 10 chiropractors interviewed in the disser-tation. I believe we can learn from all of these chiropractor’s experiences. As you read through some of their comments and experiences, pay special attention to the stress in their responses. Many of us can probably relate. These doctors were overwhelmingly candid. Dr. Holly said: “I think I had an after-school depression. You’re in school for 40 hours a week for 3.5 years with these people, and so you are ending up creating a family. And then all of a sudden you all reach that common goal, you gradu-ated, and then boom – the family just disappears. There’s no purpose anymore. There’s no getting up to go to school. There’s starting a business.” Dr. Abe said: “They said you’re on your own. You’ve got to go get your own patients. It forced us to learn how to market, but we didn’t know how to market.” Dr. Abe attributed the development of his marketing and other business skills to his working for a field doctor. Dr. Abe had to memorize his part of the script, then use that verbiage to attract passers-by to Dr. Z’s spinal screenings. “What am I in an acting class or something? I feel like I’m rehearsing for a play,” he says. “I was like, ‘this is chiropractic?’” In his own words, he eventu-ally learned that keywords triggered certain emotional re-sponses. They were woven into the scripts. That’s why Dr. Abe had to say it in a certain way, tilt his head to the right,
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